Austrottung aller Juden The Exterminations of All Jews (1)
A complete inventory of all criminal plans worked out and carried into effect by Hitler and his acolytes would be difficult to make. However, none of them was so dear, so widely supported and so ruthlessly put into practice as Ausrottung aller Juden, the extermination of all Jews. The idea of extermination prevailed in the Nazi thought and action. They contemplated, planned to exterminate even whole social categories, peoples, and races. But as their plans were extremely through and ambitious, the Nazis did not live to accomplish all of them to the last detail with their well -- known Prussian punctiliousness. The extermination of inferior peoples was much talked about but no reference was made as to which ones were to be exterminated or whether they should be destroyed entirely or partially only, part of them being turned in huge masses of slaves to serve the future masters of Europe -- the Nazi Übermenschen. The extermination of Slavs was talked about a great deal, but the figures were indefinite -- 20-30 million, and no location whatsoever. In one case the plans were accurate and the details were specified with typically SS precision, in the case of the Ausrottung aller Juden. ''Indeed, matters were perfectly clear. The question was beyond all doubt the extermination of all Jews, to the last man. With their spirit of ''Ordhung, order, the Nazis divided those who had to be murdered into clearly cut categories. In order to avoid any confusion or omission distinct orders were issued for each separate category: global orders, referring to a whole category and partial orders regarding smaller or larger groups belonging to various categories. Therefore, at the International Military Tribunal there could be produced the originals or copies of the orders to assassinate the true of alleged enemies of the Nazis, the prisoners of war, pilots jumping from damaged planes, Catholic priests, the "surplus mouths", the Slav "subhuman", the Jews "of inferior race". From all these categories, the Jews, die Juden alone were to be exterminated in their entirety. And not only the Jews of Germany, but of all Europe. Therefore, the programmed was directed against tens of thousands Jews, aiming to liquidate not only several hundred of thousands in one country or another but Ausrottung, to exterminate over eleven million Jews, all Jews in Europe, to the last man. Throughout its entire development, from its birth to its agony, the Nazi movement was obsessed with the idea of Ausrottung aller Juden, exterminating all Jews. As early as February 1920, the programmed of the Nazi Party staled: "It cannot be a citizen but he who is a co-national, and a co-national cannot be but the one who is of German blood, irrespective of religion. No Jew can therefore be a co-national". In 1923 in his book Mein Kampf, Hitler wondered: "Why hadn't been gassed some twelve-fifteen thousand of these Hebrews preventing the kin ever since the beginning of the war (1914)?", to unequivocally declare in the Reichstang on January 30, 1939, that a new world war "well result by no means in the bolshevization of the earth and a victory of the Jewry, but in the destruction of the Jewish race throughout Europe." Before the outbreak of that "new" world war, an issue of May 1939 of the German weekly "Der Stürmer" advised: "A punishment expedition should be conducted against the Jews of Russia; they should be ordained the fate awaiting all criminals and evil-doers: the death sentence, the execution. The Jews of Russia must be killed. They must be destroyed to the last Jew!" All Nazi chiefs, all Gauleiters, all'' SS''-men and Ghestapo-numbers understood that Ausrottug aller Juden, the extermination of all Jews does not imply only the Jews of Germany, but the Jews of the whole Europe. Arthur Seyss-Inquart, former commissar of the Reich for Holland declared in his work "Four Years in Holland": "For us the Jews are not Dutch. For us they are the enemies that we could never conclude an armistice or peace with... We shall strike at the Jews whenever we meet them, and those who take their side will suffer the consequences. The Führer declared that the Jews role in Europe has come to an end, so it's all over with them. On September 1942 Baldur von Schirach stated: "If I were ever reproached with having expelled from this town / Vienna -- a.n.), formerly the metropole of European Jewry, tens and hundreds of thousand Jews, by deporting them to the ghettoes in the East, I shall proudly reply: ." Hans Frank, the general governor, declared in 1941: "What shall we do with the Jews? Do you think we shall settle them in Ostland? Why then all this empty talk? In brief, we must liquidate them by our own means. We have to take steps to exterminate them. There should be as few Jews in the General Government as in the Reich proper". He also noted in his famous diary: "Do you happen to think that in the East they (the Jews -- O.L.) Would be settled in villages? In Berlin we were plainly told: ." Frank's opinions, voiced on December 15, 1941 in front of his subordinates at the gouvernmental seat in Cracow were to become fatal: "The Jews are for us some extremely dangerous consumers. At present, in the General Government, there are about 2,5 million Jews and taking into account all those related to them and everything implied, it means that their total number counts up 3,5 million. These 3,5 millions Jews we can neither shoot, not poison, nevertheless we are decided to resort to certain procedures that in a way would make their destruction successful." (The procedures they found have appalled the whole mankind. They were called: Belzec, Sobilbor, Treblinka, Maidanek, Birkenau-Auschwitz.